


A Clean and Crisply-Lined Heart

by foreverhalffull



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: A little inklicking, But no TB Spoilers, Cormoran can't find out, Don't Google That, F/M, I hope, Post-Troubled Blood, Robin gets a tattoo, This is so far from believable it's funny, but it's fun, on accident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:13:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26826427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhalffull/pseuds/foreverhalffull
Summary: Robin gets a tattoo. It's inappropriate, and embarrassing, and most importantly, Cormoran can't find out.
Relationships: Ilsa Herbert/Nick Herbert, Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 20
Kudos: 54





	A Clean and Crisply-Lined Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cari2812](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cari2812/gifts), [pools_of_venetianblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pools_of_venetianblue/gifts).



> Gifted to the lovely Cari for helping me to finally, finally elucidate the premise that had been lurking in the dusty corners of my brain, and to pools_of_venetianblue for her immense enthusiasm whenever this fic was mentioned. I hope this lives up to your expectations, friends😘😘

Robin awoke to a stinging on her abdomen, not far from her left hipbone, and bugger of a headache. The headache was to be expected, as she remembered having a couple too many cocktails with Ilsa on a girls’ night out the night before, but what was with the belly pain?

She rolled over onto her stomach to bury her head in her pillow. As she did, a crinkling noise emanated from beneath her.

Dread and vague memories formed a feeling not unlike nausea swirling in her gut. Before even rolling back over to investigate, now quite certain of what she’d find there, she picked up her phone from the nightstand and texted Ilsa.

_What the fuck have we done?_

She didn’t receive a response and was unsurprised; she found herself mean-spiritedly hoping that Ilsa was as bad off as she. And she likely found herself able to have a Sunday morning lie-in, unlike Robin, who had surveillance to run in an hour’s time. The uncharacteristic pettiness was driven by Robin’s certainty that Ilsa must have been the instigator of her tipsy decisions, as Robin would never have talked her own self into a spur-of-the-moment tattoo. A well-planned and meaningful one, she’d always secretly fancied, to Matt’s displeasure. But this had not been planned in the slightest.

With a feeling of facing a firing squad, Robin swung her legs carefully around the far side of her double bed, pausing momentarily to allow her vertigo to pass before continuing on to her bathroom. What she found there, after washing her hands and carefully peeling back the painfully adhesive bandage, was far worse than she could have imagined.

She’d gone and gotten Cormoran’s name tattooed on her hipbone. Inside of a heart. It was no small design; no, his name took up a sizable amount of skin, though the heart around it was cleanly and crisply drawn.

Never mind the appearance of the heart, though. This was Cormoran’s name. _Cormoran._ Her work partner and _friend._ Hardly identities which should merit a _tattoo,_ and in such a suggestive framing and location. His name belonged in many places: her office diary, her employment paperwork, her list of phone contacts, but not her body.

Fuck.

The only silver lining Robin could find, having spent most of her café-based surveillance Googling and telephoning tattoo parlors to inquire their availability and fees for removal, was that her oppressive singleness meant no one was likely to see the bloody thing during the week-long span before the cheapest of the places would be able to remove it for her. 

At just past noon (Noon! The woman was spoilt!) Ilsa texted Robin a laughing emoji alongside an image of her own ribcage, where Nick’s name was imprinted inside a tiny heart like Robin’s own. Screw him having such a short name it could fit in a tastefully miniscule marking.

_I’m guessing you got one too?_

Robin’s response was not intended for polite company. 

_And? What did you get?_

_I’m on surveillance. Can’t take a picture, it’s … not appropriate._

Robin sent an image of a woman smashing her head on a table before following up with _I’ll never forgive you for this, Ilsa Herbert._

***

Cormoran had just signed a contract with a new client Monday morning, a financier who suspected her competitor of insider trading, when he received a text from Nick.

_Oggy, mate. We should work Saturdays more often! Ilsa and Robin did a girls’ outing night before last, got hammered apparently, and Ilsa’s come home with a tattoo._

A tattoo? Cormoran remembered the only one he’d ever had, a chain of ink wrapping like a bracelet around his right foot. It hadn’t occurred to him to miss it when he’d lost it along with the lesser part of his leg, and he’d not deeply considered marking his skin again. He had enough permanent marks without the inky variety, and he realized with some surprise that he’d always – at least since the weeks before her marriage—assumed Robin felt the same. But had she, along with Ilsa–?

_Didn’t know you were into that, mate,_ he texted back, deciding that asking whether Ilsa and Robin had gone for matching markings was too bold a query right off the bat. 

_Me neither. It’s my name, in a heart. It’s not like anyone but me will see it, and she said it’s hardly half the permanence of marriage, but it’s hotter than I expected it would be._

_Not where anyone else will see it? I think we can stop there, mate._

_Nah, I thought you’d be interested to know Robin’s got one too. Ilsa’s seen it, I know, but she says she can’t show me the picture._

For just a sliver of a moment, Cormoran allowed himself to imagine his own name inked upon his work partner’s skin, but the feelings it stirred in him were neither professionally appropriate nor something he was willing to acknowledge properly, even to himself.

He did wonder, though, what she would get. She seemed the type of woman who would both want and need to be sure, well-planned and well-prepared before jumping into anything permanent. He told himself these thoughts extended only so far as to ink upon her skin and that the speed with which they came to him was the result of his familiarity with her character rather than prior, carefully subdued ponderings on the subject.

Would she choose a witty, joking reference, perhaps? He tried to think of what may claim pride of place as the most significant influence in her life and came up only with the job. But to what tattoo would that lend itself? A stylized trench coat, a magnifying glass? That was hardly sexy. The next most beloved thing he could draw to mind was her family’s dog, Rountree, but though adorable he was hardly tattooable. 

He settled, finally, on the idea that she must have inked herself with a small, well-placed Yorkshire rose, not considering that the flowers’ emotional implications for Robin may have been vastly different and indeed nearly toxic, rather than the closest recollection she had had to feeling at home in seventeen years. Nor did he consider why Ilsa would have been unable to show such an image to her husband.

His task was now only to discover the location of the tattoo he was certain he could picture to an eerie degree of accuracy in his mind’s eye. He was a detective, he assured himself; the task would be easy and nearly a game. He had always prided himself, however, on his ability to never intimidate a woman with his physical persona. Having seen many smaller men use their bodies to monger fear, he had sworn from the second week in the commune at Norfolk that no matter what bearlike physique he may be destined to grow into, as his mother’s “best friend” commented almost daily, he would ensure he was as thoroughly of the teddy variant as could be. Thus, the content of his character dictated that he must spot the marking without entering Robin’s space in a new or unfamiliar way, and without staring wrongly or long enough to make her feel uncomfortable.

Cormoran was unaware his objective had a deadline. Robin was similarly unaware the objective even existed.

He didn’t see her on Tuesday, as she was interviewing a mark’s estranged half-sibling in Oxfordshire and he’d been unable to find a sufficient excuse to cancel his three client update meetings in order to ride with her, as much as he wanted to. He laughed at himself as the thought crossed his mind, realizing that only a half-decade before, the idea of voluntarily riding with a woman would have seemed laughable. But then, Robin _was_ exceptional.

On Wednesday, Cormoran and Robin spent the majority of their morning at their shared desk. She was wearing a knee-length dress with sheer navy sleeves and strappy, flat sandals. Though he was nearly caught doing it, he ruled out her ankles and calves and was mostly certain her arms were bare as well, unless the ink was small and hiding beneath the inch-wide leather strap of her watch. 

There were, of course, other common spots for a tattoo, but if she had chosen a ribcage or “underboob” – he shuddered at the word he wished he had not learned – marking as Ilsa had, he’d certainly have to renounce any hope of ever spotting it. 

On Thursday, she wore pinstriped slacks and a top with a frilly sweetheart neckline. Her hair, which had draped down her back the day before, was tied up. He noted that her neck was bare, as was the flesh behind her ears. He’d not guessed she would have chosen this spot, though; his Robin was too frugal and resourceful to waste money on a tattoo she’d never be able to see with her own eyes. 

He would be forced, he supposed, to ask after the marking in conversation. But as a detective worth his salt, he knew he couldn’t suddenly bring up tattoos without giving himself away. What other markings could he ask about?

The answer dropped into his lap so fortuitously he almost believed in a higher power. Just before lunch, Pat delivered a message from a potential client who wanted them to investigate an individual who was repeatedly and without medical reason intentionally shitting in the members-only pool he operated. He could send across the CCTV footage of the pool, or he was happy to grant them a temporary membership to stake out the pool deck if they preferred.

“Ooh, I vote we tell him we need the membership,” Robin suggested. “That would be nice, since it’s warm, to get to sunbathe on the job.”

“Not me, I just burn to a crisp. And I don’t believe for a minute the same doesn’t happen to you, Ellacott.” 

The real reason he didn’t particularly enjoy frolicking on a pool deck was caused by the stares his prosthetic received when he laid in a chaise, and the dangerously slippy ground he had to brave when the staring became unbearable and he wanted to retreat beneath the water’s surface.

“CCTV would be easier anyway, so long as the shitter has some sort of identifying marks. Birthmarks, moles, unique hair…” He trailed off.

“A prosthetic leg…” Robin added with a chuckle. “Would be quite lucky, wouldn’t it? Or I guess if you’ve a unique tattoo, you could be identified on security footage,” she mused. She didn’t look any more pensive or alarmed at the realization. Nor did she offer a reality-show-style confessional of her weekend’s tipsy happenings.

He’d assumed they were close enough to warrant her telling him any such juicy tale which sprung to mind – they were best mates, after all, so whom else would she tell but him? – but she stayed mum.

“That’s why I’d never get another tattoo,” he confided, hoping to warm her to the subject. “Don’t need to be any more identifiable than my hunk of metal already is as a detective.”

“You’ve a tattoo?” she was shocked, and her jaw dropped fractionally at the revelation.

“Did have. On my ankle, so it’s gone now. Rotted away in Helmand, I suppose.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“’S’not a big deal,” he said, hoping she would continue the conversation but wary of pushing the envelope.

She hummed as she took a bite of her sandwich and swallowed thoughtfully. “D’you think we should take the case, then?”

_Bugger._ His disappointment lifted momentarily as he realized her language was needling its way into his subconscious.

“Yeah, I reckon so. Sounds like it’ll be a fun one for you to run, if you think you can take another solo at the mo.” There she was, again, inside his brain without invitation, changing him, becoming a part of him.

She grinned. “I’d love to.”

It seemed she was unwilling to talk; he had even managed to mention tattoos explicitly and nothing had come of it. He would seemingly have to keep looking, though the elimination of most of the common and easily visible spots meant he’d have to be particularly careful to do so without making her uncomfortable, which would be nowhere close to worth any information gained. 

He hadn’t come any closer to ending his hunt by the earlier-than-usual close of business that evening. Michelle, Barclay, and Hutchins all returned to the office just past four in order to host a brief surprise party for Pat’s birthday. Her birthday was technically the next day, but as she’d booked a day’s leave to have a long weekend, they were having the party in advance. The often-prickly woman had clearly not expected the gesture and was beyond touched, hugging each of her colleagues in turn.

“Thank you, Robin,” she rasped in her deep voice, but her boss just smiled and pulled back from the hug to tip her head across the room toward Cormoran.

“It was all his idea,” she said. “He can be a good gift-giver, when he pleases.” 

He rolled his eyes but accepted a second hug from the office manager, pulling a face at Robin over Pat’s head in annoyance at her outing his soft side. She grinned, though she quickly ducked her head to hide it when Michelle caught her eye mischievously over her plate of cake.

With each passing day, and indeed with each team meeting that cemented the profoundly positive and friendly office culture in contrast to the pain and dysfunction of the year before, Robin’s feelings for Cormoran were becoming harder and harder to hide. At least the bodily evidence would be eradicated in just over twenty-four hours. 

“Robin, would you mind passing me a new fork? I think we finished the old pack, but there should be a new box of plastic ones in the top cupboard.”

He supposed out of kindness to the environment he should have bought more reusable cutlery when his employ extended beyond himself and Robin, but he hadn’t gotten around to it and was glad in this moment, as intentionally dropping his plastic fork (and having hidden the rest of the old package in advance) gave him an excuse to watch her stretch for the top shelf, which he hoped would expose the last somewhat-appropriate part of her body he could hope to find home to a tattoo.

She looked at him curiously, pondering the fact that Hutchins was marginally closer to the kitchenette than she, but complied nonetheless. The top shelf was a bit of a stretch despite her above-average height, and she’d asked Cormoran multiple times to stop leaving things there. He’d protested that the bottom shelves were overly crowded, and she’d been forced to concede.

Her top lifted just slightly as she reached up, needing one arm to stabilize herself and the other to fish along the cabinet’s shelf until she felt the box which was too high to see. The movement revealed a small expanse of creamy, unblemished skin, and though he kept his eyes – inquisitively and professionally, he hoped – on her lower back and backside until she began to turn around, he was none the wiser as to where her mysterious marking may have been hiding and marginally more uncomfortable for trying. 

The feeling of discomfort only increased when he looked away from Robin and directly into Barclay’s intense stare. His eyebrow was raised, but Cormoran couldn’t tell whether the expression was one of amusement or of concern and protection for his friend, and an intolerance for another colleague leering after her.

Cormoran sighed and forced a grateful smile to his face as he accepted the fork from Robin. Better luck tomorrow, he hoped.

***

By Friday’s after-lunch tea break, he’d almost entirely given up on his mission to locate her elusive tattoo. He’d have to start afresh come Monday, and in a daydream he briefly imagined opening an official case file for the search, complete with one of those body diagrams provided at the doctor’s to indicate locations of pain.

When Robin re-entered the inner office after her turn to wash the mugs, she began to hurriedly but neatly clear her side of the desk. He eyed her quizzically, having been quite sure she was scheduled into the office for the rest of the evening.

“Alright then, that’s me off. I’ve an appointment this afternoon, urgent. Sorry.”

She stretched beside him on tiptoe to replace a box of files on the top of the cabinet behind the partners’ desk. Suddenly, just when he’d least expected it and indeed given up entirely, he saw a flash of ink between the waistband of her trousers and the rising hem of her shirt.

“What’s that?” He couldn’t help himself asking, and he hoped the shocked near-urgency in his voice didn’t come across as harshness or panic.

She couldn’t meet his eye and pretended to be still settling the box until the ruse became unbelievable. “It’s temporary.”

This was not a lie, she told herself. It would, in fact, be gone in a number of hours.

“No, no. It’s…” She nearly kidded herself into believing he would say _‘It’s good,’_ but he did not. “It’s a… a tattoo?”

“It says cormorant. That's my favourite bird.” 

Of all of the lies Robin had told during her career with the man beside her, this one was by far the most utterly shit. Why would a cormorant be her favorite bird, except because of him, and why had she not said it was something else entirely, rather than drawing him so much more closely to the scent of her feelings than he’d likely been before this confession, having only seen the briefest glimpse of the ink?

“Does it?"

"Yep." 

"I didn't know you had a favourite bird. I’d have thought it would be a Robin, actually. That's mine."

"Is it?"

With considerable effort, he got out of his chair and bent down to one knee so that he was eye-level with her navel, hidden behind her thin-but-opaque summer blouse.

Robin was quite certain she wasn't breathing.

Looking up to her eyes and moving slowly, so that it was beyond clear she could tell him to bugger off at any moment, he lifted the hemline of the left side of her shirt.

His name was there, encased in a crisply lined heart. A heart! 

Trying to hide the confusion and emotion the unexpected sight was stirring within him, he swallowed and met her eyes jokingly. "I'm afraid your tattoo artist lied to you, Robin. That definitely says Cormoran.”

Why, oh why, did this have to be the first time ever on record that someone had gotten his name right on the first try? Anxiety curdled at subzero temperatures deeply within her belly. She couldn’t imagine leaving this office with her dignity, her heart, or her job intact, let alone all three. Best try to save the job, at least, as it was the one thing she could neither replace nor live without.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry?” Cormoran whispered his response, an echo of her own words. Why was she apologizing?

“I don’t remember getting it, and I know it’s inappropriate. I’m getting it removed, that’s the appointment I’ve got just now. But if I’ve made you feel uncomfortable –”

“I don’t.”

“But you’re my boss. I shouldn’t –”

“I’m your partner, Robin. Your partner.” His voice was as tender as the thumb which brushed gently across the curve of the script of his name.

“Don’t be pedantic, Strike.” Her voice came out more harshly than she’d intended, but she had precious little control over the timbre of her voice given the lump swelling in her throat, threatening to revoke her ability to breathe.

“We work together. That’s hardly… _hipbone tattoo territory._ ”

She spat the words as if they were dirty and shameful, and he realized that despite the fact that she was by far the better of the two of them at upholding a cover, he had managed to act professionally enough that the idea of their being anything other than colleagues seemed frightening to Robin. He supposed it possible that other things may have been at play, others’ opinions and accusations and Robin’s fear that acting on her feelings would constitute playing into those assumptions or stepping into their traps.

“What you are to me, Robin… You are the best work partner I have ever had. But you also – And remember, the two are only connected by your inherent goodness bleeding into both of them, rather than the two lying along a single causal pathway – what you are to me, Robin, could also fit into hipbone tattoo territory. There could be love there, if you want it.”

A single tear ran warmly and slowly down her right cheekbone. 

“Are you–?”

He didn’t know how to finish his sentence. He was terrified that he had just, somehow, ruined every good thing in his life in one fell swoop.

“I’m happy,” she interrupted. “I’m happy. I just never thought…” She smiled down at him bigger and more brightly than he’d ever seen, more radiantly even than the smile they’d shared at her wedding as he’d knocked over her flowers and the axis of her world.

“I do want it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He smiled back at her just as brightly and, maintaining eye contact the entire time, moved his smile to the second part of her to bear his name. There had first been the heart she was born with, she knew not how long ago, and now this one, and he kissed it warmly and ever so gently, tracing the shape from its cleft around the bottom and back again before laving his tongue against his name and blowing on it as if to allow the ink to dry – permanently this time—and she hissed. This was both the hottest and gentlest moment she’d ever experienced, and it was only the first with him. 

“Oh, Cormoran.”

Somehow the sound of his name on her breath was better than the sight of it on her, which he’d only precious moments before thought could never be exceeded. 

“My love.” His tongue traced the shape of the heart once more, before he kissed each miniature letter of his name. Eight letters; he’d never wished there were more in the bulky and embarrassing moniker but he did now, for the excuse to kiss her more, but her breathy encouragement ensured him that he needed no excuse. 

***

Robin didn’t make the Friday afternoon appointment about which she’d been so anxious only hours before. In fact, she didn’t leave the building until the pale hours of Monday morning, when she crept down past the darkened office to make a brief stop by her flat to make herself presentably non-post-coital before returning to Denmark Street. She had a morning of office work, but Cormoran was out on surveillance until after lunch. 

She flushed at the sight of him when he returned, almost casual in his denim button up and chinos; it was the first time in the office she had been intimately reminded that they were more than partners. He flashed her a wicked smile as he crossed the inner office to lean unintimidatingly into her space with his left arm propped on the desk in front of her chair and his right resting behind her head.

“Morning, Robin,” he said huskily.

“It’s afternoon,” she teased, quite proud and impressed at her ability to compose a response.

“Well, g’d’afternoon, R’bin.” He tugged gently at the ends of her hair as he drawled his reply.

“I think I snagged my sleeve on a nail in that alley tailing McShady earlier, d’you think you can mend it?”

She dragged her eyes from his face for the first time to notice a rip along the inside seam of his left sleeve, on the desk directly in her line of sight. If he’d snagged it, he’d done so incredibly cleanly. It looked more like the seam had been let neatly out.

“On the inside of your arm? How’d you manage that, Strike?”

He smiled at the tone and name she only used when frustrated or teasing. “Dunno. You’re a detective.”

She reached out then, and when her right hand made contact with his bicep, she heard the rustle of a thick bandage beneath. She looked back to his face with concern. Had he intentionally let out the seam in a ruse to get her to notice the bandage, or had he hurt himself when the shirt tore?

“Take it off,” he said. It was not the first time he’d said the words to her, as each of them was carefully and arousedly aware.

Beneath the plaster and gauze and the covering somewhat akin to cling wrap, which she did not remove, was her name, encased in a clean and crisply-lined heart.

“Cormoran,” she whispered, touched beyond measure. Of course, there was an inherent perpetuity to their presence in one another’s lives given their legal entanglement through the agency. But a tattoo – a thoughtful and sober one – didn’t mean any less for the assuredness of their permanence to one another.

He moved his right hand from behind her head to cup her jaw. “That’s not what it says. We may have to enroll you in a reading comprehension class, love. Can’t have you on cases when you can’t read.”

She laughed tearily and found herself fondly and lightly stroking the mark on the inside of his pinkened bicep as he’d done to her own hip.

“It says Robin,” he said. “That’s my favourite bird.”


End file.
